September 20, 2012

The nights are getting longer, and the days shorter.  Light later and later so now the school bus goes round in the dark and when dinner is a little late, it's early dark beyond the door when we eat.  In this morning the crepe myrtles are glowing faintly with the always present fluorescent light from the kitchen window; the road is a flat orange ribbon though the dark verge, lit by the streetlight moon.  The easing of night has not reached that deep indigo blue that is one of my favorite colors.  A little breeze is rocking the flat silver discs of the wind chime outside the window making it gleam with reflected shine.

Adagio

Third Movement from Feierliche Abendmusik

 (Holiday Music in the Evening)

A dream gives what the day wore out;

At night, when the conscious will surrenders,

Some powers, set free, reach upward,

Sensing something godly, and following.

The woods rustle, and the stream, and through

    the night blue sky

Of the quick soul, the summer lighting blows.

The world and my self, everything

Within and without me, grows into one.

Clouds drift through my heart,

Woods dream my dream,

House and pear tree tell me

The forgotten story of common childhood.

Streams resound and gorges cast shadows in me,

The moon, and the faint star, my close friends.

But the mild night,

That bows with its gentle clouds above me,

Has my mother's face,

Kisses me, smiling, with inexhaustible love,

Shakes her head dreamily

As she used to do, and her hair

Waves through the world, and within it

The thousand stars, shuddering, turn pale.

-- Hermann Hesse

Translated by James Wright

I woke this morning from a dream of mother, her kissing me, bending over me in the narrow bed of my childhood.  And I came to find this poem, which I remembered but had to search for, forgetting its name.  I have been avoiding writing because everything seemed so tied to Mama that I would just not be able to write anything without grief.  And now, this morning, when I woke with her love kissing me, I decided that there is no use denying the grief, because in that way I am denying how much I loved her and how I am missing, not her love which I know was inexhaustible, but her presence.  In waking from that dream of her, I embraced her presence in that dream, and remembered this poem and realized the dance of love is not over, just continues on though the night where she can still kiss me into the day where I carry that love and give it away, sharing it with every one in my life.

This is why I have not been doing the morning note, but I decided that sometimes it's all right to talk about the difficult times, and some griefs cannot be avoided, and this is one of those times, and perhaps it will get easier if I stop trying to avoid any mention of how I feel and just write it like I do the rest of my life.  Something about how sweetly Mama kissed me this morning gave me . . . courage.